Validity and Reliability of the Parenting Stress Index Short Form (PSI-SF) Applied to a Chilean Sample

The Parenting Stress Index was developed in response to the need for a measure to assess the parent-child system. Its abbreviated version, the Parenting Stress Index Short Form, is an instrument with multiple clinical applications and is useful for research and intervention purposes. The Parenting Stress Index Short Form was standardized for use with parents of children ranging from 1 month to 12 years old. Several validation studies are available, most of them not supporting the original structure of three factors. No validation studies for this instrument currently exist in Latin America for a socially vulnerable population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate both the validity and internal consistency of Parenting Stress Index Short Form in a Chilean sample including 336 dyads (mean age of mothers 21.4 years; SD?=?7.38; and mean age of children 84.8 days; SD?=?78.0), demonstrating risk for negative health outcomes and who attend public primary health care. An exploratory factor analysis showed a three-factor structure that was compatible with the original version and explained 41.45?% of the variance. Internal consistency was high both for the total scale (Cronbach’s α?=?0.92) and the three subscales (0.81: Parenting Distress; 0.89: Parent–Child Dysfunctional Interaction and 0.88: Difficult Child). The Goldberg General Health Questionnaire was used to assess external criterion related validity and a positive and statistically significant correlation was found (0.86). The evidence suggests that the Parenting Stress Index Short Form can be used as an instrument to measure the relationship between parenting and stress. Due to its psychometric characteristics, it can be applied to a vulnerable Chilean population. The contribution of this study is the validation of this instrument in a Spanish speaking population with characteristics of social vulnerability.     

Psicobiología del síndrome de Down

Resumen

En este artículo revisamos los conocimientos que existen en la actualidad sobre el síndrome de Down, atendiendo a todos aquellos aspectos que, por su relevancia, facilitan una mejor comprensión de esta cromosomopatía. Después de una breve reseña histórica, y tras definir lo que se entiende por síndrome de Down, pasamos a ocuparnos de la alteración genética que lo determina, así como de los factores que parecen estar relacionados con su origen. A continuación estudiamos las alteraciones específicas que acompañan a este síndrome, considerando principalmente los aspectos morfológicos externos, el problema de la hipotonía muscular y otros trastornos biomédicos, el retraso mental y las diversas anomalías neuroanatómicas y neurofisiológicas que presentan los sujetos afectados. Por último, indicamos las nuevas perspectivas que se abren en el estudio de esta alteración genética.     

“Dictating the Suitable Way of Life”: Mental Hygiene for Children and Workers in Socialist Mexico, 1934–1940

After the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), an ambitious project of national reconstruction began in which education and health were two priorities in the consolidation of a new nation. In this context of social, cultural, and political transformation, mental hygiene was a field that made it possible to articulate the professional practice of psychiatrists with the project of the nation promoted by postrevolutionary governments. In Mexico, the mental hygiene movement was headed by the same doctors who professionalized the practice of psychiatry and made it a specialized field of knowledge. The first generation of psychiatrists managed to integrate mental hygiene into health and education policies during the socialist administration of president Lázaro Cárdenas; a phenomenon that made evident the articulation between mental hygiene, social medicine, and nationalist discourse. Discussion will focus on proposals made from the perspective of mental hygiene as a function of two social sectors regarded as priorities by the Cárdenas government: children and workers.     

Increasing task difficulty enhances effects of intersensory redundancy: testing a new prediction of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis

Prior research has demonstrated intersensory facilitation for perception of amodal properties of events such as tempo and rhythm in early development, supporting predictions of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (IRH). Specifically, infants discriminate amodal properties in bimodal, redundant stimulation but not in unimodal, nonredundant stimulation in early development, whereas later in development infants can detect amodal properties in both redundant and nonredundant stimulation. The present study tested a new prediction of the IRH: that effects of intersensory redundancy on attention and perceptual processing are most apparent in tasks of high difficulty relative to the skills of the perceiver. We assessed whether by increasing task difficulty, older infants would revert to patterns of intersensory facilitation shown by younger infants. Results confirmed our prediction and demonstrated that in difficult tempo discrimination tasks, 5‐month‐olds perform like 3‐month‐olds, showing intersensory facilitation for tempo discrimination. In contrast, in tasks of low and moderate difficulty, 5‐month‐olds discriminate tempo changes in both redundant audiovisual and nonredundant unimodal visual stimulation. These findings indicate that intersensory facilitation is most apparent for tasks of relatively high difficulty and may therefore persist across the lifespan.     

Relevant Restricted Quantification

The paper reviews a number of approaches for handling restricted quantification in relevant logic, and proposes a novel one. This proceeds by introducing a novel kind of enthymematic conditional.     

Say-do correspondence to improve disruptive behaviors in adults with Down's syndrome

The most acknowledged strategies for the treatment of disruptive behaviours are those that are based on direct contingency management. Other procedures allow the therapist, or educational agent, not to be present in the context in which the behavioural change has to take place: the say-do correspondence training procedures, which have proven effective across behaviours and populations. Nevertheless, there is surprisingly little evidence of the effectiveness of such procedures with populations presenting developmental disabilities. This study describes the implementation of say-do correspondence training to modify 5 disruptive behaviours present in 5 adult subjects diagnosed with Down's syndrome, showing very positive results. The advantages of using say-do correspondence training procedures in developmental disabilities are discussed.     

The emergence of motor imagery in children

A total of 80 children (40 5-year-olds and 40 7-year-olds) took part in an experiment to evaluate their capacity to mentally evoke a motor image of their own displacement. Using a chronometry paradigm, movement duration was compared in a task where children were asked to move in order to take a puppet back to its home (actual) and to think about themselves executing the same action (virtual). Movement durations for actual and virtual displacements were obtained in two conditions, where either no information was provided about the weight of the puppet to be displaced (standard situation) or the puppet was described as being heavy (informed situation). A significant correlation between actual and virtual walking durations was observed for 7-year-olds in the informed condition. This result provides evidence for a motor imagery process emerging in 7-year-olds when children are required to think about themselves in action.